The Denis Theatre opened as a single screen movie theatre in 1938. This theatre was split, with the theatre on the orchestra called the Denis Theatre, and the one in the balcony called the Denis Encore Theatre. At the time I knew it it was an RKO Stanley-Warner theatre. When Almi took over they got rid of all RKO Stanley-Warner’s operations outside of the New York metropolitan area, and the Pittsburgh area theatres became Cinemette.

The Denis Quad Theatre, as it was last referred to, closed in September 2004 and was to be demolished to make way for retail and office space. Instead, there are plans to reopen it as a theatre, with fundraising underway.

Back in 2010 I linked to a Boxoffice article about theater renovations which included a photo of the Denis Theatre in Mount Lebanon. That link is dead. The bad news is that Boxoffice is reconfiguring its digital archive and will be moving everything to a new format. The good news is that, for now at least, the old archive is still online, though somewhat altered, and I don’t know for how long.

In any case, while it lasts, here is the page with the photos of the Denis, from the issue of October 15, 1938. You can’t navigate directly from one page to the next anymore, so here is a direct link to the second page of the article with the text about the Denis.

Nice to see some conversation here about The Denis! We are still in the midst of fundraising to re-open the theatre as “Four Spaces for Art” ((two theatres, a learning center/screening room, and year-round visual art gallery). Please follow along with our progress at www.denistheatre.org and https://www.facebook.com/denistheatrefoundation

The Denis opened in 1938 says one source and was named after a senator’s son Denis Harris. Twinned 1965, quadrupled 1981, closed 2004. Purchased by a focus group, one screen reopened 2013 although probably not full-time, ongoing renovations.